This had such an impact on me, I still remember
it: I was sitting at my desk almost 20 years ago. I like to stay abreast of
non-medical scientific literature. So I picked up my issue of Scientific
American and something jumped off the page at me.

Elizabeth Blackburn had made a truly
revolutionary discovery. I’ll never forget it.

When I read that she’d found a solution to
aging already in our genes, I took out a piece of paper and wrote down
something that I still have today. It says, “This will change the world as we
know it.”

Now, finally, it seems other people think so,
too. Elizabeth Blackburn won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Why all the fuss? Let me explain why this
discovery is so powerful…

She and her colleagues had discovered the enzyme
telomerase that allows you to rebuild the end part of your chromosomes
called the telomere.

Telomeres are like the plastic caps on your
shoelaces … only at the ends of your DNA. They keep your chromosomes from
unraveling.

But here’s the rub…

Each time your cells divide, your DNA copies
itself exactly. And every time that happens, the telomeres get a tiny bit
shorter. When telomeres get too short, the cell stops dividing. This is because
there’s not enough of the “cap” left to stop the DNA from unraveling.

In other words, it’s the length of your
telomeres that let your chromosomes know they can’t make good copies any more.1
It’s like an auto-shut-off mechanism so you don’t make damaged DNA.

What this means is that telomere shortening
serves as your genetic clock. This in itself is a huge discovery, but
there’s even more to it. After years of research and testing, scientists have
found a way to stop your telomeres from shortening.

How? The enzyme that can turn back your
biological clock: telomerase.

Telomerase is in all your cells, but it’s
usually turned off. The key to slowing or even reversing the aging process is
activating it.

Telomerase’s job is to make a blueprint so your
telomeres can rebuild themselves when your DNA makes copies. This way, your
telomeres don’t get shorter. Sometimes they even get longer.

In fact, Blackburn discovered that telomerase is
so important, even healthy, growing cells can have “catastrophic telomere
shortening” without the enzyme. And when it’s active, telomerase rebuilds
telomeres that have suffered shortening.2

Eventually, this discovery could lead to
immortality. But activating your telomerase has benefits for you, right now.

Old Cells Can
Be Young Again

When you get sick, your immune system makes
copies of its disease-fighting white blood cells called T-cells. These cells
divide over and over again to fight off the bacteria or virus that’s invading
your body.

The more often these cells reproduce, the shorter
their telomeres become until they stop copying. The older you get, the fewer
active T-cells you have because they’ve fought off as much sickness as they
can. The bottom line is that when your telomeres are short, your immune system
looks and acts old.

This makes your risk for infection and disease
much higher. One study looked at about 150 people from 60-75 years old. The ones
who had shorter telomeres were three times more likely to die from heart
disease. And they were eight times more likely to die from an infectious
disease.

Shortened telomeres also appear to be the
mechanism for many chronic diseases like:

Diabetes. When you eat too
many carbohydrates, your pancreas is asked to create more insulin than
it’s supposed to. And to get the job done, the pancreas has to create more
of a factory to create the insulin it needs by making more cells. If the
pancreas is continually challenged to produce more and more insulin, the
cells have to continue to divide. When their telomeres are too short, they
can’t reproduce anymore. And your body can’t make the insulin you need.
This is what causes diabetes.4

Atherosclerosis. One study I
read looked at men with high blood pressure. Those with shorter telomeres in
their white blood cells were more likely to get heart disease.5

Alzheimer’s disease.Alzheimer’s
patients’ glial cells, the maintenance cells to the brain, have short
telomeres. Some kind of toxic environmental hazard caused those cells to
replicate to defend themselves.6

But you don’t have to let your immune system
grow old. When telomerase is activated, you strengthen your cells by keeping the
telomeres long, strong and young. And the younger your cells are, the more
powerful they are at fighting sickness and disease.

In fact, for most of the people in a brand new
study, telomerase activation therapy reduced the percentage of immune cells with
short telomeres by 10-50 percent. And the amount of older immune cells decreased
by 10-20 percent.7 This represents an “apparent age reversal of
5-20 years!”8

Grow Younger
Naturally

Tons of research is going on every day and
you’ll be reading more and more about telomerase in the coming months. But in
the meantime, you can help slow the aging of your cells with nutrients.

One of the best nutrients for activating your
telomerase is trusty omega-3. A new study in the Journal of the American
Medical Association followed about 600 people over a full five years. They
found that daily supplements of omega-3 significantly increased telomerase
activity.9

Luckily for you, there are lots of foods you can
eat to bulk up on omega-3 right now. Cold-water, high-fat fish like mackerel,
wild salmon, lake trout and herring are good sources. Also, you can eat plenty
of raw nuts and seeds. Walnuts, brazil nuts, almonds and pumpkin seeds are some
of my favorites.

The good news doesn’t stop there, though.
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition recently looked at telomere
length in about 600 women. Those who used vitamins had telomeres that were on
average 5 percent longer than those who didn’t supplement.10

Three vitamins your telomeres need are B12, C and
E. You can get these in a variety of foods.

Food
Sources of Vitamins B12, C and E

Vitamin B12

Vitamin C

Vitamin E

Beef (Grass-fed)

Kiwi

Turnip Greens

Beef Liver

Strawberry

Spinach

Salmon

Orange

Broccoli

Haddock

Grapefruit

Almonds

Tuna

Mango

Peanuts

Trout

Red & Green Bell Peppers

Olive Oil

Milk

Raspberries

Kiwi

Unfortunately, in most circumstances, you might
not be able to get enough of these vitamins from what you eat. If you can’t,
supplementing is a good option.

Vitamin B12 – I recommend
taking at least 100 mcg per day. But, you can take as much as 500 mcg per
day to help improve your brain function and boost your energy levels.

Vitamin C – Based on my own
experience, taking up to 3,000 mg per day is a good amount if you’re
currently in good health. And in times of stress or sickness, you can take
up to 20,000 mg. It’s very important to make sure you’re getting a
natural form of vitamin C, not a synthetic form. Natural vitamin C is over
100 percent more effective than the synthetic form. And it can stay in your
system longer.

Vitamin E – There are eight
different types of vitamin E. And they get divided into two different
groups: tocopherols and tocotrienols. Most multivitamins you find have only
synthetic alpha tocopherol. Make sure you get a vitamin with a natural E
complex. That way, you get all four tocopherols. Plus, natural E has twice
the bioavailability of the synthetic form, so your body can absorb it
better.

Vitamin D is called the “sunshine vitamin”
for good reason. But it might soon be renamed the “telomere vitamin.”
That’s because a separate study by the American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition looked at more than 2,000 women of all ages. The more vitamin D
they had in their bodies, the longer their telomeres were. On top of that,
people who supplemented with vitamin D had longer telomeres than those who
didn’t.11

To get some vitamin D in your system, go out in
the sun for 20 minutes each day. Your body will use sunlight to make tons of the
stuff. If you don’t live in the Sunshine State, like I do, you might need to
eat some of those same cold-water fish that give you omega-3s. There’s also
vitamin D in egg yolks and orange juice.

If you need to take a vitamin D supplement, I
recommend 2,000 IU a day.